The Future
by Mai Kusakabe
Summary: After Dressrosa, Law reflects. Luffy may have some insight, even if it's in his particular way.


I've wanted to write something with Law and Luffy for a while, and here it is. I wrote this _weeks_ ago, but only now got around to posting it.

This hasn't been beta-read, so sorry for any mistakes.

* * *

 **The Future**

Law leaned back against the mast, head tilted up to look at the slowly darkening sky.

Today was their second day out at sea since they had left Dressrosa, and after the disastrous start of the trip —he wasn't even going to try to understand the abysmally ill-prepared bunch of idiots that were the members of the Barto Club— they had reached a calmer area of the sea. That, of course, meant that it was a great occasion to throw another party. The Strawhats weren't the sort of people to say no to a party, and Bartolomeo and his gang were literally drooling with glee at being with their idols. Law himself didn't mind a party, if the circumstances allowed it, but he had decided to skip it and had moved to the crow's nest instead.

He hadn't had a moment to think since the battle.

Things hadn't gone according to his original plan, and yet they had turned out better in some aspects. He was alive, for one, when he hadn't really expected to survive the fight with Doflamingo. He had planned everything counting on the fact that he would die at Dressrosa. None of his allies had died, either, and while Law hadn't _wanted_ them to die, he would be lying if he said he hadn't known it was a very likely possibility when he had proposed the alliance to Strawhat back at Punk Hazard. Doflamingo was still alive, which bothered him, but Law hadn't been making things up when he had said he was going to die. Doflamingo may have been able to counter the most immediate effects of the Gamma Knife, but that attack had other effects, ones that appeared much more slowly and that few people had survived long enough to experience.

With some luck, and Law was feeling lucky lately, Doflamingo would experience the more painful of those effects. He would regret patching himself up.

Law caught himself before he could start smiling and grimaced. He was sure that, despite how much he had wanted to stop his brother, Cora-san wouldn't like to know that Law enjoyed so much the thought of Doflamingo experiencing a slow and painful death.

 _"'Just keep on living'... He'd have said something similar were he still here, no?"_

No, he certainly wouldn't like it.

"Here you are!"

Law startled and looked to the front. Strawhat was there, grinning with his arms resting on the wooden railing of the crow's nest and the rest of his body dangling in the air. He had a very large piece of meat held in his right hand.

Strawhat climbed up and sat next to Law. He bit into the meat.

"What are you doing here?" Law asked when it became clear that Strawhat wasn't going to speak anytime soon. The last time Law had seen him, he had been doing something with a pair of chopsticks and his nose that Law was only a slightly bit embarrassed to admit half of his crew would be more than happy to emulate.

"You left the party," Strawhat said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Law didn't see any point there.

"And?"

Strawhat shrugged and threw the now bare bone over the railing.

"Being alone isn't fun, especially when you're not okay."

"I'm okay," Law countered, but cursed himself in his mind for being so careless that Strawhat —who apparently was a lot more perceptive than he let on— had noticed.

"Really?"

"Yes."

Strawhat jumped onto the railing. Law thought he would leave him alone, but instead he stretched his arms down —there were startled yells from below and some very creative curses from Roronoa— and brought _an entire table_ up. Surprisingly enough, nothing spilled during the process. Law had to move out of the way, because the table obviously didn't fit inside the crow's nest, and it was left precariously balanced between the mast and the railing, which held most of its weight.

Law sighed. It seemed Strawhat had no plans of leaving, after all.

He reached for a full mug and leaned against the mast. Crouching on the other end of the table, that was empty because the plates had slid to the center on the way up, Strawhat continued to happily inhale food.

"For thirteen years," Law started, not sure why, because he wasn't even drunk to justify it, "I've lived for revenge. Kill Doflamingo, that has been my main objective."

"For Mingo's brother?" Strawhat asked with his mouth half full, apparently remembering what Law had told him when they were going to the palace back at Dressrosa. The only reason Law understood him was due to years of practice with terrible table manners.

He nodded.

"Now that he's been caught, I'm at a bit of a loss." It wasn't that Law didn't _know_ what to do, he was the captain of a crew and they were in a serious mess with Kaido, but now that his main objective had been accomplished he felt his world was unbalanced.

Strawhat laughed.

"We go on an adventure," he said, stretching his arm to grab a plate next to Law, "to Zou. We find my crew and yours." He stuffed half the potatoes on the plate into his mouth. "Then we kick Kaido's ass. And the other Yonko's, too."

Law almost grinned. Of course Strawhat wouldn't see what was the issue with feeling a little out of sorts. To him, there was only the choice to go forward. Once an objective was accomplished, you moved on and did something else. And maybe there was wisdom in that way of thinking, as strange as it seemed to associate that word with Strawhat.

"But I'm gonna be the one to find One Piece," Strawhat added when the potatoes were gone.

This time, Law did grin.

"We'll see about that."

He formed his room and brought a plate of spiced fish that still survived next to Strawhat to his hand.

"Oi!"

* * *

I'm of the opinion that Law's Gamma Knife must have had some effect on Doflamingo that Doflamingo couldn't counter by stitching himself back together. One Piece is not the sort of manga where we see flashy attacks just for the sake of flashy attacks: there's usually more than one reason for most things Oda does, even if he sometimes takes 500 chapters to explain them.


End file.
